Oh dear

Laurie was laid off today from school even though we had thought that she would be employed until December 17th. We're really praying for a good result from her job interview this week.

Catching up a bit

Mostly, over the last week or so, I've been sleeping a lot and hanging out in bed to try to alleviate the pain in my back. I went to the doctor a week ago friday and basically, came up with the "I have no idea what is going on" diagnosis. So, I'm getting set up for an MRI and a biospy and see what the heck is going on. (We are pretty sure that our lymphedema theory is not what's going on.) That and the meds keep me pretty sleepy and saying some pretty funny things :). Once I was talking to Laurie just before I took a nap and finished the conversation as if we were talking on the phone and then giggled about it for about 10 minutes afterward.

Our Thanksgiving was very nice, we went over to our friends Paul and Debbie's for dinner around 3. Everyone brought a traditional dish and there was lots and lots of food that was all delicious. After, we went over to my grandparent's house for dessert. Laurie made a delicious pumpkin pie out of the pumpkin that we bought and roasted after Halloween. It was very yummy :). We went to both places with about 4 bottles of heavy whipping cream and came home with none for our leftover pie. That's a lot of whipped cream! Of course, we did make three different kinds of whipped cream - carmel, egg nog, and regular.

So, let me catch you up on my spinning things now, (I have been knitting but I failed to take a picture of what I've been up to.) First, are the pictures of the bunnies. One of these brothers will be coming home with me soon! The woman whom I'm purchasing it from sent me these pictures to hold me over until I can come hold them. They are so cute!!

Next, I've been support spindling the first batch of bunny fiber that I got at the fiber festival from the bunny lady. The spindle's almost full! It's so soft!

Next, I just received a new shipment of angora fiber and I'm blending it with some merino that I just got to make a beautiful, soft, amazing pair of socks for myself. I love the color that the two fibers make together, a heathery purple. The first picture is the angora, then the "Wine" merino wool and the last the first batt I made of the two of them and what I've spun up.

Last is some handpainted BFL that I'm spinning up for Expressions in Spinning. This month, we're spinning up a poem by Shel Silverstein, My Beard. It goes:

My beard grows down to my toes,
I never wears no clothes,
I wraps my hair
Around my bare,
And down the road I goes.

I was thinking that the pinks and beige's remind me of cold, red toes and noses and a bare bottom. :)

A particularly ouchy week

I've kind of put off posting this week because I'm not having a particularly happy, good week. Last week, when I showered, Laurie noticed a new lump on my back. We're pretty sure that it's another blocked lymph node causing problems, but it is acting a bit different that the one in my neck. For one thing, it hurts really badly all the time. Even just running your hand over my back right now is very painful. So, I've been favoring that side for a week now and all my other muscles are protesting. My PCP hasn't been in the office all week, so hopefully we can get in contact with her today and see what's up. It's just frustrating to be in pain and frustrating to not be able to do the things I want to. I was trying to spin laying down last night with the heating pad. :)

In other bad news, we found out this week that Laurie won't have a job starting December 17th. That's about a month away (some people have assumed we mean next year, but no, unfortunately). Having just bought a house, we are not too pleased. The whole school is shutting down. It seems that they have realized half way through the school year that they don't have enough money to complete it. They should have closed the school in June and even though they own some property free and clear that might pay for the rest of the school year, the board of trustees for the school aren't wanting to sell it. Not only is this bad for teachers and staff losing their jobs, the seniors expecting to graduate in May are pretty screwed. Because the school was on the block system, they don't have enough credits to graduate this year at another school. So, everyone is scrambling to try and fix the credit issue and apparently, some parents and former parents, have offered to try to keep the school open. We'll see what happens. There is one glimmer of hope in this, there is a position open at a school near us that Laurie really would fit into very well, so keep us in your prayers, I know that God is in this somewhere and there is a reason for this. God is good and will get us through this. It's just been a long week...

A goodbye, some fiber and vegetarian hunting

Well, yesterday, my turtle, Athena, was adopted by a new family. She'll be well taken care of and be a beloved pet for another little girl. I'm a little sad that she's gone, but we haven't been taking very good care of her - especially when we lived in our last place and I couldn't get into the room that she was living in. I'm confident she's in good hands and the new family said they'd keep me updated on how she's doing. Here's Athena's goodbye picture...

Laurie and I had a big dinner party last Saturday with our church dinner group and some of their family members. Dinner was fabulous, we had a belgian ale pot roast beef stew, yorkshire pudding, and roasted vegetables. Basically, all of our favorites and it was delicious. When we were shopping for dinner at Trader Joe's we found the coolest thing! Brussel sprouts still on the stalk! I took pictures while Laurie prepped them for roasting, she called the zeal in which I photographed the sprouts the equivalent of vegetarian hunting. :)

Lastly, an update on knitting and spinning. I've started 2 new knitting projects this past weekend. One is the alpaca February Lady's sweater that I'm using the alpaca from Chile to make. It was a bear to try and wind into balls. We ended up with a tangled mess that Laurie's been picking apart. I think we're going to try wrapping it around something like a chair before trying to wind again because the hank is too big to fit our yarn store's swift. I also started the first project I've ever used my own handspun for. I'm knitting up a little kerchief with the lace weight silk that I just finished spinning. It's going really fast and the pattern's been easy to memorize so it's been a good out and about project. I also just got some new fiber. The purple in the pictures is BFL from Pagewood Farms in the colorway "River Rock". The second picture is of a BFL/silk blend that I got from Spunky Eclectic. The colorway is called "Joshua Tree" and I'm totally in love with it. I'm planning on making a pair of stocking with it and I'm really excited about it. I also got a little bit of Wennsleydale wool handpainted in the same color as the BFL/silk combo. I've been curious to try out new fibers and Wennsleydale is new to me, and I'm looking forward to try out spinning it. I'm going on a fiber diet for about a month or so now, I have so many projects to do and I really don't need more fiber. I do have sad news, my 12" russian spindle sustained an injury, the top broke off in my bag. I'm very sad about it, but I'm working on getting a replacement and also making a bag to protect the future new ones.

PS. Laurie said I could have an Angora bunny for Christmas!!!!! I'm so EXCITED!!!!!!!

Knitting, spinning and such

Well, I finished the hedgehog, Woolflower, in time for the family reunion party, so she's off to a child getting the services from Ronald McDonald house. She was a lot of fun to knit and create. Laurie did the needle felting of the eyes and nose and mouth. She turning out really nice and we found out that we can felt things in our front loader washer! Here are the pics:

This past week, we met with our Expressions in Spinning group. I finished my skein for "The Soul of the Rose" painting. It is 100% tussah silk, lace weight yarn and I have about 290 yards. I found a beautiful kerchief pattern on Ravelry and plan to start knitting it up as soon as I get this yarn wound into a ball! It will be my first project with my handspun.

Our topic for this month was favorite movie and they drew my name out of the hat! I chose the first Harry Potter movie, because it's definitely one of my favorites and it was so close to Halloween that it seemed appropriate. I found some beautiful gray-white cashmere/silk fiber that I'm spinning up on my Russian support spindle, the color looks like Dumbledore's beard. I'm trying to spin it as finely as possible, hopefully it will be around cobweb weight and I can make a little shawl out of it.

A drappt day...

We have a friend with MS that always refers to her Dr. appointments as "drappts" all said as one word. Yesterday, I had an appt with my PCP. She's wonderful and her clinic had the H1N1 vaccine available to give to me so I got it. According to the AZ health dept website, it's not even being offered to clinics yet. This has definitely been a time when being a part of the county system has been in my favor. I just need to wait out the 2 weeks before the vaccine really works! Not that I'm not still going to be really careful about using my hand sanitizer and stuff but it's a big relief to have gotten the vaccine without long lines and fighting for it, all I had to do was ask. Anyways, about three weeks ago (maybe 4?) Laurie noticed that I had a bit of swelling right above my left collar bone. When you palpate the area, you can feel a mass and it's a bit sensitive to be touched. Last week, I had a CT scan so we could see what's going on because it's getting bigger. So, I was a little worried about finding out the results of the CT yesterday. Turns out it's not anything really big. It's most likely that I have a swollen lymph node that's blocked or something and the lymph fluid that would otherwise be filtering through it is backing up causing the swelling. We're going to wait and see if it changes, and if it gets bigger, we're off to see the ENT doc again. Right now, the lymph node is only 1 cm, so it would be a bit of a needle in a haystack to do a biopsy of it, that and the location is not great for doing that. So, we'll see. It's kind of started feeling achy a little bit all the time, so we'll see what happens with it. I'm very relieved it's not something major! Well, that's the end of the medical news for now, I've got some fiber related stuff that I'll do in another post... Trying to decide if I want to post or spin...